Abstract
Although economists and other social scientists have worked hard trying to disentangle what factors can explain differences between performances across schools, there are few studies about the impact of management on education. For example, the discussion about management on productivity has not caught strong attention from economists (Bloom et al., 2012, p. 2). In the case of causal evidence coming from randomized trials, the gap is even larger. Despite a growing number of randomized experiments conducted by social researchers to address critical scientific questions on policies in the last decades, very few trials have been undertaken to explore the causal consequences of management on productivity (Duflo, 2007; Fryer, 2017). Thus, this research intends to reduce this knowledge gap by applying a rigorous scientific method, precisely a randomized field experiment, to understand our first research question, i.e., whether there is a causal relationship between school management and pupil learning. Understanding how management affects schools within and across countries is complex because of the lack of comparable measures to systematically assess management practices (Bloom et al., 2015). Therefore, as this research intends to use the same international management index created by Bloom et al. (2015), it will allow direct comparisons within Brazil and across different countries.
Although Brazil is one of the largest economies in the world, the country has marked levels of inequality and poverty. These two problems can create a unique pervasive dynamic in which individuals remain trapped in environments with scarce opportunities for upward social mobility (Banerjee & Duflo, 2007). High-quality public and free education are vital to breaking this vicious cycle, remaining the most reliable intergenerational way out of poverty for millions of families (UNICEF, 2020).
It is relevant to highlight that Brazil has more than 5,500 municipalities with the same standardized public educational system as Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian educational system is bi-partite composed of private and public schools. The private system holds only 18.58% of the students from clearly better-off families, and the public system is responsible for the remaining 81,42% of pupils from mostly disadvantaged families. Even though the same Federal laws regulate the public system, they face diverse cultural and socioeconomic realities. Many schools are in income-deprived areas such as slums or favelas and deal with very complex social phenomena. This study's management practices have been developed to be flexible to adaptation and implementation in different realities. A key factor for adaptability is the inter-institutional team. It is thought to be dynamic and ready to adapt the baseline plan whenever necessary.
The City of Rio de Janeiro is the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro and has the second-largest population among Brazilian cities, with almost 7 million people (IBGE, 2020). It has one of the largest education systems in South America, with 1,543 schools and nurseries and 644,000 students from nurseries to special schools. The Rio de Janeiro case is remarkable because many schools are located within slums and favelas dominated by drug dealers, where even the police cannot enter and where families are exposed to extreme marginality and violence daily. Exposure to extra-school vulnerabilities directly influences the learning conditions. In this context, management practices are even more crucial to ensure meaningful learning and increased growth prospects for pupils. The project will deal with 80 schools randomly selected from the Rio de Janeiro school population, mostly from poor city regions.
The idea is to improve education by implementing best management practices reported in the academic literature through the offer of in locus consultancy to selected schools. Considering the scarcity of resources in underdeveloped and developing countries, it is crucial to create feasible public policies. Aiming at a viable project, a partnership between government institutions in Rio de Janeiro was signed by the Court of Accountability of Rio de Janeiro (TCMRJ), Municipal Secretariat of Education (SMERJ), Dr. Tiago Cavalcanti (Faculty of Economics – University of Cambridge), Professor Shailaja Fennell (Centre of Development Studies – University of Cambridge), and Felipe Galvão Puccioni (Principal Investigator – TCMRJ). Based on the best practices shown in the academic literature, a flexible plan has been developed to deal with different schools, cities, and country realities. A randomized field experiment will be conducted to test a causal relationship between the best management practices that will be implemented and educational results. Eighty schools were randomly selected and assigned by pair-matching in two groups: treatment and control. For two years, the team, starting in 2022, will help school principals and managers to implement the best management practices.
The management practices of this study are adaptable for each school depending on the management level encountered on the diagnostic phase. The flexibility and customization of these practices are possible because the project is thought to be implemented by an interinstitutional team formed by marked professionals hired from the partners' institutions. The team will adapt the best management practices baseline plan to each school depending on the school, city, and country reality. Although the experiment is in Rio de Janeiro, it is supposed to be easily implemented in different social contexts globally with the appropriate adaptation to local realities.
This study could lead to a deeper understanding of state run-schools, which represent 81% of primary schools and 73% of secondary schools around the world, according to The World Bank (2020). Even though principals play a critical role and there is an increasing consensus on what they must do to be effective (Fryer & Dobbie, 2013; Fryer, 2014), this study will go further and analyze not only the school principals but also other managers within the schools who help the school heads to manage the educational units.
The second research question is: How can the government audit institutions, such as the courts of accountability, act directly to generate better public policies? These institutions have attracted the growing interest of citizens, governments, and non-governmental institutions worldwide because they play a relevant role in avoiding corruption and reducing public resources waste (Melo et al., 2009). More recently, there has been a movement to broaden the scope and the theoretical basis of the public policies analysis conducted by governmental audit institutions. In addition to analyzing the economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of public policies already made in performance audits, the idea is also to evaluate the utility and impact of public spending using the scientific framework of social sciences.
Brazil uses the court system and has thirty-three independent accountability courts that act at the national, regional, and local levels, and its members are life-tenure judges. In addition, there are specialized independent life-tenure prosecutors and autonomous auditors with strong stability against arbitrary dismissal. These strong guarantees aim at ensuring the independence of the Courts from the government. This study, in an innovative path, will check how the Municipal Court of Accountability of Rio de Janeiro (TCMRJ) - which is responsible for controlling thirty billion "reais" (four billion pounds) in public policies each year – will conduct a two-level clustered randomized field experiment ex-ante in partnership with policymakers to verify a policy before it is implemented. Therefore, this research aims also to explore how a government external control institution, specifically the Municipal Court of Accountability of Rio de Janeiro, can bring innovations, in partnership with policymakers, by conducting randomized field experiments.
In summary, the research is intended to bring more substantial evidence than previous studies on whether management can impact school performance. Furthermore, it can lead the courts of accountability or audit offices to a new way of acting, bringing, in partnership with policymakers, innovation and better public policies for the society.
The project is innovative in different ways. Firstly, the interinstitutional design is unique. It involves a partnership between the controller and the controlled government to develop, based on the academic literature, implement, with an inter-institutional team, and test, through a randomized field experiment, a set of the best management practices. Secondly, we use government institutions to develop, implement and test your own policies through a very rigorous scientific path. Assessing the causal relationship between management and educational results is innovative and challenging. Thirdly, the project is developing an innovative path of action for the government independent audit institutions by conducting randomized field experiments in partnership with policymakers to test public policies before those are implemented.